Through the Looking Glass: Philosophical Toys and Digital Visual Effects

Through the Looking Glass: Philosophical Toys and Digital Visual Effects Stephen Prince Abstract: Digital visual effects bridge art and science in ways that have ex- panded the expressive tools available to filmmakers. Digital imaging also has enlarged a domain for realism in cinema based on indexical and perceptual factors. Examining these factors, the article questions the visual skepticism that often surrounds discussion of visual effects in film studies. A conjunction of art and science has characterized cinema throughout its history, especially in the era of “philosophical toys” from which the medium originated. The article examines that era in light of what it suggests about digital imaging today and the aesthetic forms that it enables. Keywords: digital effects, indexical image, perceptual realism, philosophical toy, special effects Digital visual effects come to us by way of the phenakistoscope. Nothing ever happens for the first time in film history, and we can learn about contemporary modes of image making by taking a detour into the past, to the begin- nings of cinema in an era when science and entertainment were connected by a well-traveled bridge. The bridge between art and sci- Digital visual effects ence that gave birth to movies is relevant to our understanding of come to us by way of how digital imaging tools function in cinema today. Art and science the phenakistoscope. coexist in a domain where fantastic worlds are built with a physically accurate rendition of the behavior of solids, liquids, gases, light, movement, and sound. This area of contemporary culture is the domain of digital visual effects in cinema. To enhance the credibility of their visual effects, filmmakers collaborate with scientists, utilizing software programs that simulate environments and objects whose behavior is rendered according to known laws of physics, the properties of light and of fluid, and particle dynamics. The rendering of fluid dynamics, for example, has come a long way on screen in a short time. Digital Projections Volume 4, Issue 2, Winter 2010: 19–40 © Berghahn Journals doi: 10.3167/proj.2010.040203 ISSN 1934-9688 (Print), ISSN 1934-9696 (Online) 20 / PROJECTIONS simulation of water proved very difficult for effects artists to master. The gi- ant tidal wave at the end of The Abyss (1989) is unconvincing, in part because it lacks texturing—froth, spray, bubbles—and is insufficiently translucent. It was a first digital go at doing water. In 2006 for Poseidon, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) collaborated with Stanford University to incorporate current re- search on fluid dynamics. Stanford’s researchers worked on a phenomenon they called “vorticity,” which is the swirling effect seen as water crashes around solid objects, and ILM built this information into the film, helping to make the rendering of water far more convincing than in years previous. Although visual effects may draw on science, they are works of aesthetic imagination, and moviemakers often cheat reality for dramatic purposes. Or- ange firelight would have made the blue-skinned Navi in Avatar look gray, an undesirable outcome, so the filmmakers decided to implement a policy they called “spectral compensation,” in effect ignoring the interaction of orange and blue light in this context (Duncan 2010: 130; Figure 1). Perceptual Realism Visual effects manifest a dialectic of art and science, and as such they negoti- ate terrain for a realist aesthetic in digital cinema. Claiming a basis for realism in digital visual effects may seem a counter-intuitive move, but several no- table film scholars have indeed made such a move. Warren Buckland (1999: 185), for example, found the dynamic staging in depth that digital effects en- abled Spielberg to achieve in Jurassic Park to be compatible with Bazinian no- tions of deep focus. Tom Gunning (2006b: 347) has argued forcefully that we need to move beyond the familiar dichotomies of theory: “I believe we distort our experience of films if we try to assign the effect of realism—or even the sensation of physical presence—exclusively to the photographic or confine the artificial to ‘special effects.’” Indeed, there are very good reasons for insist- ing on a critical perspective that is amenable to integrating computer graph- ics capabilities with aesthetic properties of realism in cinema. In an earlier essay (Prince 1996), I identified a digital basis for realism in cinema in terms of what I called “perceptual realism,” which was the replication via digital means of contextual cues designating a three-dimensional world. These cues include information sources about the size and positioning of objects in space, their texturing and apparent density of detail, the behavior of light as it interacts with the physical world, principles of motion and anatomy, and the physics in- volved in dynamic systems such as water, clouds, and fire. Digital tools give filmmakers an unprecedented ability to replicate and emphasize these cues as a means for anchoring the scene in a perceptual reality that the viewer finds credible because it follows the same observable laws of physics as the world they inhabit. The referential status of the representation does not mat- ter in this conception of realism. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS / 21 Dinosaurs are not living beings in the age of cinema. They cannot be pho- Figure 1. Throughout tographed as sentient creatures. Thus their logical status in Jurassic Park is as Avatar, the N’avi objects that are referentially false. They correspond to no reality that the film’s retain the blue of their skin in firelight, viewer could inhabit. Yet, as depicted in the film, they are perceptually realis- an impossible color tic. They interact in relatively convincing ways with the live actors in dynami- combination but one cally staged scenes that bond the domains of live action and digital permitted by the animation. And because they are perceptually realistic, they are able to com- filmmakers for pel belief in the fictional world of the film in ways that traditional special ef- dramatic purposes. fects could not accomplish. The creation of perceptual realism is a major goal of special effects artists. Visual effects seek to persuade viewers that effects are real within the referential terms of the story. Therefore, the more compre- hensive is a scene in evoking perceptual realism, the likelier it is to compel the spectator’s belief. No one watching Jurassic Park was fooled into thinking that dinosaurs were actually alive, but because digital tools established perceptual realism with new levels of sensory detail, viewers could be sensually per- suaded to believe in the fiction and to participate in the pleasures it offered. Had the film employed established and traditional effects tools, this sensory persuasion would have been far less remarkable. That is because traditional effects tools have been quite limited in their ability to create perceptual realism. The compositing of live action, matte paintings and miniatures in The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933), The Valley of Gwangi (1969) and other comparable creature movies was visibly false, compromised by overt matte lines between the elements and by the planar rendition of space that prevented the matted creature from interacting with 22 / PROJECTIONS the live actors. The composited elements exhibit a perceptual disparity—limited interaction between the domains, contradictory manifestations of motion blur—working against the emergence of an organic unity of action. Under these terms, the dramatic space of the screen action becomes perceptually suspect. Earlier generations of special effects images manifested similar problems and elicited degrees of skepticism in viewers. Digital effects have helped cinematic imagery overcome problems triggering a reality check by viewers that undermined the fictional enterprise. Orthodox Assumptions about Visual Effects Perceptual realism, then, is central to understanding special effects in cinema, the goal of effects artists, and the credibility that the effects image seeks to elicit among viewers. Moreover, it has important implications for two orthodox assumptions in film studies: 1) that visual effects equate with spectacle and that spectacle is anti-narrative, and 2) that vision—the act of seeing—is primarily a culturally coded activity and therefore relative to social formations in a given period. About the first appearance of the digital dinosaurs in Juras- sic Park, Michelle Pierson (2002: 120) writes that the film’s narrative stops dead so that the digital effects can be showcased at length. “The narrative all but comes to a halt, the music gradually builds, and shots of characters react- ing to the appearance of the dinosaur with wonder and amazement are inter- spersed with long takes displaying the computer-generated brachiosaur center screen.” She argues that during the “wonder years” of the early 1990s, digital effects broke the narrative action by being showcased in sequences that dwelled on visual spectacle for its own sake. Scott Bukatman (2003: 113) writes that “what is evoked by special effects sequences is often a hallucina- tory excess as narrative yields to kinetic spectatorial experience.” (It should also be said, however, that Bukatman’s work on special effects acknowledges the intersection of art and science and does not approach them with suspi- cion.) Annette Kuhn (1999: 5) echoes this idea, finding that “when such [special effects] displays become a prominent attraction in their own

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